I have actually been quite pleased with what patch 3.2 has brought to PvP in Azeroth; not only is there a new battleground, there are substantial improvements to both Resilience and DoT damage, enough to make Affliction warlocks and Shadow priests alike jump back into the fray. Yes, Destro locks got a slight nerf to Fire and Brimstone, but the warlock trees remain pretty balanced. I’m pretty happy with it so far.

There are a lot of PvP changes to take in with 3.2. Here are the major ones.

THE ISLE OF CONQUEST

If you haven’t visited The Isle of Conquest yet, you should do so immediately. Not only is it a lot of fun, but anyone who claims in /bg to have the right strategy is talking total BS. You have to play a lot of matches, with a lot of different types of opposing strategies, to really say how to win. So don’t let any natural Battleground inhibitions get in the way, because NOONE knows what they’re doing yet. It’s total chaos and total fun.

Now, while the strategies are in flux, your tactics should be the same as other battlegrounds: fight at the flag, not in the road, defend what you take, and kill the opposing healers while defending your own. But questions like, should you capture the hangar or the docks first, or how many people should defend the keep? Those strategies are still to be written. Keep an open mind and experiment!

WINTERGRASP

Wintergrasp is now an instanced battleground, so the biggest change is in numbers and lag. On Durotan, a 3:1 A:H server, the Alliance often fielded 3 full raid groups, which allowed crowd contol and gang tactics to overcome 20 stacks of Tenacity. With limits of 80 players per side, I expect to see more even matches, which lessens the impact of CC while enhancing Tenacity.

The other huge change is that the legendary Wintergrasp lag is gone. This should equalize things a bit, as during most frantic Keep combats you were limited to instant cast spells.

As opposed to the Isle of Conquest, Wintergrasp strategies are pretty well established at this point. I’m a conservative sort, though, so I’d like to see if the lack of lag and reduced numbers affects them at all.

Also: when the battle is over, you can now fly through Wintergrasp. This is awesome on many, many levels.

RESILIENCE

Resilience now affects all incoming player damage, not just crits and DoTs. This is both a survival buff for everyone (making Resilience THE stat to have in PvP, after 6% hit cap), and an indirect buff to any DoT-heavy spec, like Affliction Warlocks and Shadow Priests. It’s an indirect buff because DoTs are no longer resisted differently than direct damage, therefore relatively improving them.

I love this change. It simplifies Resilience and makes it the battleground stat to stack.

(The one modification you may need to make to your target Resilience is that it now takes about 15% more Resilience to mitigate the same amount of critical strike rating. So if your target was 800 before, you should shoot for 920.)

TIME’S UP

I haven’t played in the new Warsong Gulch, with a time limit, or the new Arathi Badsin/Eye of the Storm, with lower resource limits, yet. But I think all of those changes are good ones. Yes, spending two hours in WSG is great for the HK and damage meters, but terrible for honor/minute.

And the changes to grant honor for defending nodes? I LOVE THEM.

BATTLEGROUND XP

I wish I had this feature when I was leveling up to 80. I spent many hours in battlegrounds that were a needed break from questing, but I hated the tradeoff. I expect to be using this a lot with some of my alts.

The side effect of earning XP in battlegrounds, of course, is that now you can turn off all experience gains for a character by visiting the stealthed twinks in the War Rooms of Orgrimmar or Stormwind, respectively. This feature has gotten a lot of attention because of the implications it has for twinks; they are now no longer city-bound, and twinks will only fight twinks in BGs. This is a great thing for both the twinks and the casual PvPers, since the presence of each was often an irritation to the other.

But I think that this will also concentrate twinks into 2, or maybe 3, brackets (19, 29, and 39). There just aren’t enough in the upper brackets to support a good community. Perhaps I’m wrong, and that everyone is off at The Isle of Conquest. But after an hour in queue last night in the 59 bracket, I am starting to think that leveling my DK through regular battlegrounds is the way to go.

EVERYTHING ELSE IN 3.2

Speaking of the lower battleground brackets, how cool will the 19 bracket become with Travel Form / Ghost Wolf and mounts for everyone at 29? Or the new heirloom chest pieces?

Okay. I don’t know how cool they will be for those brackets. I need to roll a twink and find out.

But I do know that 3.2 excites me in a way that 3.1 utterly failed to do, probably because I’m not a progression raider. As someone who spends a lot of time in Azeroth’s battlegrounds, I really like these changes. They are thought out well to bring people back to the battlegrounds to have fun.

3 responses to “PvP in Patch 3.2 and The Isle of Conquest”

Had a blast in the new bg Isle of Conquest. Only got 1 chance to play it inbetween raiding times and the game took quite a long time.

Completely agree – there is no proven strategy to win this yet. Each node has advantages when you hold it (I believe that’s the case!) but I got the feeling that some definitely were more of an advantage than others. The one in the middle to the east produces vehicles.